The Empty Whitecoat

The buyer-centric revolution: The rise of reverse direct marketing

Alan Mitchell, a fellow member of the steering group of the UK Buyer-Centric Commerce Forum (and prolific writer on the failures of seller-centric commerce, marketing and branding) has a teriffic new article published in the recent issue of the Journal of Interactive Markteting (copies have to be purchased).

A synopsis from Ingenta:

A long-standing and fundamentally important division of labour between marketers and consumers is coming to an end. Traditionally, companies make and sell while consumers buy and use. But emerging added-value buying services are putting the power of IT and information in the hands of consumers and reversing the flow of marketing processes, so that buyers' search for value pre-empts sellers' search for customers. The buying process is becoming professionalised and organised. At the same time, such ‘reverse marketing’ processes represent a fundamental challenge to the direct marketing status quo while promising to realise direct marketing's dream of ‘perfect’ relevance at minimum cost.

This article is particularly interesting because it not only expertly synthesises numerous perspectives on the whole subject area but also draws on several examples of organisations developing reverse marketing and buyer-centric business models and strategies (including reverse marketing solutions business Conciera).

As part of my work, I am also compiling case-studies of reverse marketing in practice and am developing a analysis of the different strategies firms (new and old) are pursuing to capitalise on the failure of traditional marketing logic. Please write me if you have any experiences of this you can share with me .. I will then be happy to share this with you...

Then, my next mini-project is to develop a reverse market assessment framework, a diagnostic that companies can use to assess their current position, develop and share understanding and then identify what they can do to experiment and grow appropriate opportunities and strategies . Do let me know if this is something you would be interested in .

Customer Breakout!

Today, OMC Group Retro Software releases Customer Breakout, a modern-day version of the classic arcade game. Designed as an executive toy for today's stressed-filled marketer, Customer Breakout offers unparalleled options in modern marketing gameplay. Uniquely, it now provides three revolutionary gameplay options:

1) Easy - Help move the customer's bat! Make the game easier by partnering them to become smarter hitters! Build a higher trust score for your customers!

2) Medium - Let the customer choose the colour of the bricks but still keep putting more and more of the damn things in front of them. Ask them permission to play but then make it difficult for them to move the bat! Watch all those balls just pass them by!

3) Hard - Stick the bricks together with the strongest cement you can find, make the ball move faster, be aggressive, make the bricks reappear over and over despite being hit. Introduce more balls with slightly different shapes and speeds! Sit back and watch as your customers disappear... Better still, just sell them the bricks and be done with it!!

OMC's recommendation - Just play the Easy Option. You know it makes sense..... .

TeliaSonera: "Simplicity makes everything possible"

I really liked this statement of future organisation and customer value posted by TeliaSonera, the Nordic and Baltic telecomms provider on their website. It describes a vision for the business in the year 2010 and how their focus on simplicity will help them achieve their and their customers' goals:

In 2010, TeliaSonera is a genuine service company. We serve individuals and families, companies and organizations. We make it possible for our customers to connect and communicate over distance - everywhere, any time. We enable them to use systems, networks and services to their advantage. Safe, smart and fast. This is basic.

We believe that the innermost trigger of our customers' needs is to be able to fulfill everyday wishes and obligations with less of an effort, thereby making life and business easier, more efficient and more enjoyable.

Simplicity has made it possible to get things done in a way and to an extent no one ever thought possible. The market for communications services was actually never mature. It was our lack of imagination and the complexity that held us back. Today, we have realized that our market is just emerging.

TeliaSonera has taken simplicity to a level where it makes a real difference. We have made it our strongest competitive advantage. It is about making all the communications services work together seamlessly and appear as one system, whether they are mobile, fixed, Internet or other solutions. It is about all the pieces of technology working together, enhancing simplicity and serving the usage with accuracy. Our services are intuitive to use - as easy as switching on the light, or even automatic. Technology is invisible. But it is there behind the scene and it takes professionals like ours to manage it for our customers.

Simplicity has become our lifestyle, making us cost efficient, enabling us to offer services with good value for money. TeliaSonera is easy to deal with, to do business with and to partner with. Our communications services are easy to find, understand, buy, use and enjoy. We take pride and delight in our parts as enablers - making life a little easier and smoother for others. And it works. Simplicity has made a difference worth buying. And has built a company worth being proud of working for.

TeliaSonera simplicity has released customer needs and made us a major player in the European service industry. The unique position we hold is due to our unparalleled level of simplicity as perceived by customers when bench marked against the rest of the service industry. Simplicity makes everything possible.

And later this too about my pet subject, given prominence in a section on "business concept",

TeliaSonera serves and meets each customer in a way that creates value for money. This ability is based on leveraging size and transforming comprehensive customer knowledge into actions.

Stirring stuff! But I wonder if the customer reality matches the TeliaSonera promise? I'd be interested to hear of any customer experiences that either confirm or contradict their simplicity mantra...

The failures of corporate branding: Outside-in perspectives

The following is an extract from a paper I have just completed with Professor Simon Knox on reverse market corporate branding. If you are interested in a copy of "Reverse Market Orientation and Corporate Brand Development", please email me at chris.lawer@theomcgroup.com.

Corporate branding and market orientation

The concept of market orientation has steadily evolved to define a way or even a philosophy of doing business that has the potential to underpin the success of many organisations. Although there are multiple conceptual definitions and perspectives, there is general consensus that market orientation reflects the need for an organisation to be both market-responsive and customer-driven. For example, Desphande et al. (1993:p.27) suggest that a market orientation is particularly consistent with a customer orientation, or “a set of beliefs that put the customer’s interest first, while not excluding those of all other stakeholders such as owners, managers and employees in order to develop a long-term profitable enterprise”. This view regards customer orientation as part of an overall corporate culture where organisational values reinforce, perpetuate and align commercial actions and focus. Slater and Narver (1995: p.67) concur. They also define market orientation as “the culture that … places the highest priority on the profitable creation and maintenance of superior customer value whilst considering the interests of other stakeholders.”

If, as Deshpande et al. and Slater and Narver argue, market orientation defines a cultural focus on satisfying the needs and wants of an organisation’s customers, then corporate branding is one important means to convey this cultural emphasis. Its goals are to conceive, manage and communicate corporate brand values in order to guide managerial decisions, actions and normative firm behaviour. Yet despite these intentions, there are a growing number of critics of corporate branding who claim that it often does not achieve such alignment and consistency. These academics and practitioners argue that the customer’s interests can never be put first, despite the claims of the market concept and market orientation. For example, Mitchell (2003) suggests that instead of corporate brands fulfilling their role as trusted beacons of superior customer value, a form of “brand narcissism” sits at the heart of the way firms create, distribute and exchange value; a disorder that arises from a combination of the structural, operational, motivational and methodological causes that define modern brand management. Willmott (2003) also focuses on a misalignment in firm-customer interests. He suggests that many commercial organisations have forgotten the importance of mutual relationships that should exist between themselves and other key stakeholders. Ind (2003a:p.4) adopts a similar view, stating that in their primary pursuit of sales, growth and profitability, firms “can be meretricious and they can try to limit our freedom of choice. These are seller-centric brands that operate from the perspective of the brand builder … they undermine the very reason we pay for the reassurance of brands: trust”. Kitchin (2003) also discusses issues of trust, relationships and corporate brand management. Like Tapscott and Ticoll (2004) in “The Naked Corporation”, he places the three in the wider context of the declining trust that individual customers have in commercial organisations.

We argue that to address these criticisms, corporate brand management must first acknowledge and then find new approaches to correct the misalignment of interests that can exist between the actions of the organisation and the needs of its customers and other stakeholders. At the heart of this shift in corporate brand management is a greater understanding of customer attitudes, knowledge, values, relationships and their perceptions of value. Managers must augment the traditional "inside-out" tenets of corporate brand value (vision, culture and image) with additional "outside-in" dimensions that are derived from the new drivers of customer value.